i'll always think of you that way
by MissiAmphetamine
Summary: Drabble. Pre-slash. Post-Winter Soldier. Steve found Bucky, and brought him in. To get him help, to heal him; to get James Buchanan Barnes back. But there are days when Bucky thinks the man Steve remembers is lost forever and utterly, crushed beneath the weight of blood, pain, and more deaths than he can count. And then, there are the days where he finds a little hope.


**Disclaimer: Not my 'verse, I'm just playing in it.**

**Author's Note:** So I've taken a break from Dramione to write my first ever Marvel fic. Love reading Avengers fics, but never written any. And then this happened. Because omg Bucky feels. Just a standalone drabble at this point, but in the future this may slot into a full-length fic.

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i'll always think of you that way

Sometimes, the tension seems to ease, in odd, quiet little moments. Sometimes Bucky almost feels free; or perhaps simply doesn't care that he's not. There are these pauses. The spaces in between doing things, and going places, and thinking about recovered memories that would be better lost, and lost memories that leave holes like great tears in his mind.

The quiet breaths of time between the therapist, the endless debriefings, the activities the therapist suggests to 'aid in his recovery', the awkward visits from Steve's friends. There are moments where the constant simmer of confusion and rage and _where am i who am i whatamidoing whyamihere_ seems to drop away, and he just _is_. Just exists and for a moment everything shifts into place and he feels a shadow of peace. He lives for those moments. And sometimes...sometimes he thinks he lives for Steve.

He is ninty-one floors up and the people are ants. He presses both hands and his nose to the glass, watching them scurry. They look so unimportant from up here. But then if he doesn't consciously think about it, they look unimportant up close too. Because there is something Hydra broke in his brain, and no one knows if it will ever be fixed. If he will always be the Winter Soldier, under the surface. He thinks about all the people he has killed, directly and indirectly, and his insides twist as though he has a bellyful of snakes. This moment is not one of the good ones; this is not a moment out of time, the endless pause between the exhale of breath and taking the shot.

The glass is cool beneath his splayed hands, and his breath makes an irregular circle of fog that shrinks and expands in time with his slow, measured inhales and exhales. Steve watches him nervously from the couch; Bucky can feel his bright eyes burning into his back. It's understandable; last week he tried to break the glass with the aid of his arm and throw himself out. An episode, the therapist called it. A flashback. PTSD. All Bucky knows is that he'd broken three of Steve's ribs, his nose, two fingers, a coffee table, and managed to put his fist through the plate glass before the five tranqs the Widow had fired had finally put him down.

Shell shock, they'd called it in the trenches. These days it was called PTSD, and people watched cats doing ridiculous things on the internet. So fucking stupid. He blinks and stares harder at the cars far, far down below on the busy, blaring streets. Lights and colours and people everywhere and glass and steel buildings clawing at the sky; how has the world changed this much? He'd seen glimpses of the changes in his 'outings' as the Winter Soldier, but that was different than now. The fragmented memories he's recovered of old missions are like viewing the world through stained glass; hazy and indistinct. Coloured all wrong, except for the blood.

"Bucky? Hey, are -?" Steve's voice comes from just behind his shoulder, softly spoken but startling as a gunshot because Bucky hadn't heard him get up. He's slipping; losing his edge. Before he can even _think_ his metal hand is clamping around Steve's throat and he spins them both 180 degrees, slamming Steve hard into the glass. Steve doesn't fight, just holds his hands up placatingly, and in return Bucky doesn't crush his windpipe but holds him just hard enough that Steve's throat bobs against Bucky's grasp when he swallows, and his voice is hoarse.

"Sorry, Buck. Stupid of me. I wasn't thinking." The tip of Steve's tongue sweeps out to wet his lips, and he tries to force his voice into lightness. Bucky hates the sound of his name on Steve's lips, because he is not that man anymore. He is not the man Steve thinks he is. He is a damaged weapon; dangerous and close to useless, as apt to backfire as not, and Steve still winces when he yawns and his fingers were splinted for three days. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Bucky drops his hand and steps away from Steve, eyes to the floor. "Don't call me that." They've had this exchange before but Steve keeps slipping up, and Bucky both hates and loves him for it. He is not worthy. He is not that person. He isn't the Bucky that Steve knew.

"Sorry...James," Steve says awkwardly, and Bucky hates that nearly as much. It sounds wrong, just like everything else in the world is wrong, including himself. So at least it matches. He shrugs off Steve's apology silently, and retreats to his bedroom like a wounded animal to his lair, shutting the door behind him with a click. There is a lock, but he doesn't bother with it; Steve or any other authorized personnel can override it. Steve won't though, not without reason; Bucky may not remember much, but he doesn't have to remember to know that - Steve's honour has been shown clear in everything that he's said and done in the past three months. Bucky sits down on the edge of the blanket-less foam mattress bed in his windowless, padded room - they'd taken out anything even vaguely dangerous after he'd opened his wrist with a bed spring four weeks ago - and stares blankly at the door.

_"Would you like some music, Mr Barnes?"_

A pause, and Bucky swallows hard. "Why not?" His voice is a rough, uncertain sound in the room, oddly flat thanks to the slightly padded walls. It makes him want to not talk; it sounds unsettling and weak.

_"What would you like to listen to, Mr Barnes?"_

He stretches out on the foam mattress bed, hands resting together on his stomach, soft cotton tee shirt beneath, flesh and bone hand toying idly - nervously, like a comfort reflex - with the metal one. "Something...from the war, Jarvis. If you can?"

"I'll Be Seeing You" wafts on the air after a split-second pause, and half-remembered snippets of dance halls, and dames, and Steve always there at his side, itch in Bucky's skull. He shuts his eyes to the small, blank room that comprises his present, and tries with a crease drawn sharp between his brows, to re-form the past in vivid completion in his mind's eye. But all he can see is Steve.

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Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed it! Feedback welcome, but please be gentle with me :3

Liss xx


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